Thousands of people will miss out on drugs that could extend their lives if
the government reneges on a pledge to provide £200m for banned cancer drugs,
it has been warned.

The Rarer Cancers Foundation has calculated that if the government halves the fund to just £100m per year then 3,600 cancer sufferers will miss out on drugs their doctors think will help them.

The Coalition pledged to introduced a £200m fund to pay for drugs that the NHS rationing body, the National Institute for health and Clinical Excellence, have restricted but where doctors believe they would benefit their patient.

They said it was unacceptable that patients were forced to sell their homes to pay for drugs that they were denied on the NHS.

However Earl Howe, health minister, said recently that the £200m was an 'aspirational figure' and he could not guarantee that the fund would be worth that much.

As an interim measure a £50m fund was announced to last until the end of this financial year. It was calculated that £50m would pay for drugs for 2,400 patients.

The Rarer Cancers Foundation fear that in the climate where the NHS is having to make savings of £20bn over the next four years, the fund will be downgraded.

It has been argued that between £175m and £330m will be needed to fund drugs turned down by Nice.

Andrew Wilson, Chief Executive of the RCF, said: “The Chancellor must make good on the government’s pledge to allocate an annual sum of £200 million for three years to the Cancer Drugs Fund otherwise patients will continue to be denied the treatments they need and their clinicians wish to prescribe.

“The Prime Minister made a personal promise to make these treatments available but this commitment will not be met unless funding is there.”

He added: “The Cancer Drugs Fund is meant to put patients and their doctors at the heart of decision-making but this will be just an empty promise if the money is not there to pay for treatment. The Prime Minister and Chancellor must honour this election pledge.”

A spokesman for the Department of Health said: "Though this report finds that thousands of cancer patients will benefit from the £50 million of funding we have already announced for this year, we recognise there is more to do. We will work with the NHS, clinicians, patient groups and manufacturers in the design of the full Cancer Drugs Fund to operate from April 2011, to ensure that we achieve the maximum possible benefits for patients.

"The resources available to support the Cancer Drugs Fund next year will be considered alongside other policies in the Spending Review, and will be determined in part by evidence drawn from the interim funding arrangements this year. It is only right that we draw on this real-world evidence to inform the exact level of resources required."

Meanwhile and editorial in The Lancet medical journal said the fund will lead to a deterioration in the postcode lottery for drugs as patients will have to apply to regional panels of doctors who will decide whether to fund the drug for them.

Their decision may be based on whether they have already spent their share of the fund for the year or use different criteria to a neighbouring area.

The editorial said: "Scratch the surface, and it quickly becomes clear that what this fund represents is not the victory for patient groups that some believe. Rather, it is the product of political opportunism and intellectual incoherence.”

It was also argued that it is 'intellectually indefensible' to fund cancer drugs that have been denied by Nice but not drugs for other conditions such as dementia and multiple sclerosis.

A recent report by Sir Mike Richards, National Director for Cancer Services, found that the UK lagged behind Europe in its use of drugs for dementia and multiple sclerosis just as it did for new cancer drugs.

The editorial said: "With ministers claiming that the coalition government is ‘more radical than Thatcher’, there is an increasing sense that a desire to force the pace of change is starting to cloud judgment.”